Roma furious with referee as Gainsborough Trinity are beaten by Darlington

Dave Granger

Angry Gainsborough manager Dom Roma accused the referee of costing his side the points following defeat against Darlington.

The Blues took the lead at Heritage Park before conceding three penalties and five goals to the promotion seeking Quakers.

Roma said: “I’m a bit perplexed really. It was a strange game, a lot of crazy refereeing decisions and a lot from the players as well.

“I didn’t think any of their’s were penalties. It is impossible to slide without moving your arm in any direction, its physically impossible to do it with your arms down the sides of your legs.

“The second one we have seen on video that there is no shirt pull or anything like that which is what the decision was given for.”

“To be honest I didn’t think ours was either, there were two before which he didn’t give and obviously he buckled under the pressure and gave our one.

“What disappointed me about there third penalty was that he gave an advantage, allowed them to shoot and they missed. If you are going to blow, blow straight away.”

Roma also believed his side’s defensive inexperience cost them, with mistakes being punished by second placed Darlington.

He said: “You look at the result and you see 5-2 but it wasn’t a 5-2 game. With 20 minutes left it was all square and I thought we were going to go on and win it. They scored the third and then we crumbled after that. We have a younger back four in there who probably haven’t come across that kind of pressure, dealing with crosses and stopping them. They’ll learn from that and we all want to keep climbing the leg and progressing but I’m not too pleased with the late goals.”

Attention again turned to the amount of goals being shipped by the Trinity defence, 24 in seven away games, and the former Sheffield United right back may look for reinforcements in that area.

He said: “Defensively, something isn’t right because we have kept one clean sheet in 13 games which is not good enough. We can’t keep scoring two or three goals a game to win games of football, we should be able to win games.”